Watershed
by Sigridhr
Summary: Loki wishes Darcy had never been born. Unfortunately for them both, it comes true.


**Notes: **Written for Sadirapookie's tarot challenge on Tumblr. My prompt was Justice.

I feel a bit like this fic is an interesting concept that would have done better in the hands of a more capable author. Nevertheless, I tried - make of it what you will.

"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."  
– J. K. Rowling, _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_

* * *

On Thursday, Loki buys the wrong kind of butter. On Thursday evening he tears the universe apart because of it.

Darcy had asked for non-salted, for baking. Somewhere between the bitter 'I asked for _one_ simple thing', and the 'can't you _do_ anything right?' falls the sharp, humiliating realisation of how insufferably boxed in and normal his life has become. An endless stream of supermarkets, wordless dinners where their forks clatter loudly on their plates like an argument written for symphony, and the tense silence that stretches taut between them, just waiting for someone to pluck it.

They're fencing with the peaks of glaciers, arguments about butter and cleaning flung at one another as clumsy surrogates for the fact that things have broken down, and the balance has tipped so that the only strong emotions that now lie between them are hate and anger.

He feels trapped, mortified by _butter_ of all things, and he snaps. He wishes she had never been born, like he had once wishted of Thor in a fit of childish pique. Only this time it comes true.

There is a universe without Darcy in it, and it is a hell of his own making.

The bitter snag of the wish is that he alone remembers her, in a universe which has entirely forgot. She lurks like a ghost, haunting his mind, caught in the odd limbo of his feelings – the echoes of his rage and hurt that make him glad she's gone, and the odd emptiness that settles in the pit of his stomach, that he spots out of the corner of his eye when he turns and she isn't there anymore. He alone sees the negative spaces she's left behind.

It's unfair and he knows it is – and worse, Darcy knows it is. Her memory nags at him, haunting him. He still loves her. Too much to bear the burden of her alone.

So Loki sets out to make things right.

* * *

The first time he sees her again it feels like he's been punched in the gut. All the air goes out of him, and for a moment he feels weightless and breathless. She's wearing a green dress – one he'd picked out for her, that he'd torn off her the first time she'd worn it and they'd had to take it in for repairs, blushing the whole time.

She's bored, standing beside him, looking around the room in a way that clearly says she'd rather be anywhere else. Her hand is loosely draped in the crook of his arm, and it feels heavy and formless, like she's forgotten about it entirely.

She's holding champagne in her hand, and she looks at him, a brief frowning glance that makes him stand up straighter, his hackles rising as he braces himself, but she just takes a long swig from her glass and looks away.

It's calculated apathy.

He remembers this. They'd argued before they'd come, but he can't remember why. She's angry, he can feel it radiating off her and grating at his nerves. She gives him another sidelong glance and finishes the champagne, slipping her arm from his and turning away.

It's silent and subtle, but it makes him furious. He rknows what comes next – the formal dinner, where she'd spent the whole night leaning away from him to speak to Thor and Jane. He remembers the screaming match that followed at home, the way she'd ripped that dress off herself in favour of flannels and an oversized sweater and demanded he tell her why he even invited her to these things if he wasn't going to speak to her.

He remembers roiling rage, and slammed doors.

He almost misses it the second time around as well. Darcy turns back to him, reaching for his arm and starts to speak – and just then Natasha Romanov walks up and asks him if he'd be willing to come in and assist with a project.

He remembers this dinner. He knows how it ends. This time, he turns to Darcy instead. He's startled by how much it hurts when he sees the look of surprise on Darcy's face. But it's just a flicker – they're old hats at this now.

Around him, the world is falling away. Tables, plates and guests are tipping, like the balance of a great scale, tumbling off into nothingness. It's a mad whirlwind, but they're in the eye, and it's enough that he says something that makes her smile before their world falls apart again, and she shatters like glass in his arms.

* * *

For a moment he is empty and alone, brought back to the world that had never known Darcy.

There is a part of him that is terrified. There are some words that can never truly be taken back, and he has spoken them. And he wonders if the Darcy he revives from his memories, if he's even successful, will be the same woman that he has so unthinkingly effaced.

He breathes in, and out, and closes his eyes. Either way, he cannot live without trying to find her again.

* * *

"I really have to finish this." He can hear the laughter in her voice as she brings her arm up to tangle it in his hair. His face his tucked into the crook of her shoulder, his arms around her chest as he crouches awkwardly behind her chair. "I had to get special permission to take these reports home to finish going over them. It's really, _really_ not going to look good if I come in tomorrow and they're not done."

He just holds tighter. It's been so long since he has heard her so simply happy and it makes him _ache_. They're in Darcy's old apartment, with all of its odd knick-knacks and creature comforts. It's light by soft yellow light from the string of fairy-lights she keeps up above her desk, and the sunset streams in through the open window making her skin glow golden.

He wants to stay here, in this moment, and never leave.

"By all means," he mumbles into her neck, "carry on."

She laughs and shoves at him. "Seriously, get off. Or at least help."

He doesn't want to do either, frankly.

"_Loki_," she says. It's not so playful now, tinged with a warning that he's reaching a line in the sand. The petty part of him wants to jump across with both feet, to shatter the complacent calm that surrounds them. Instead he lets go of her and steps back.

His skin feels cold where it was touching hers.

"I have to do this," she says, almost apologetically. "I know you're, well, _you_ and this sort of thing is meaningless to you, but this is my first serious, full-time job and I need to know that I can do it."

"It's just filling out _paperwork_," he says, incredulously. He knows what's coming, but he can't stop himself. It's just paper. There's nothing to prove – she's _too_ competent for such menial work.

Her face falls. "It's not just paperwork. It's self-sufficiency, reliability, and work ethic."

"You have me," he says, simply. "You have no need to work at all."

"You don't understand," she says. It's the first time she says it in their relationship, but it rings in his ears like a mantra. He's heard it a thousand times over, and each time it's meaningless. He understands things perfectly.

This time he turns away because he can't bear to look, and doesn't watch her face as everything crumbles about them. The fairy lights wink out above his head, plunging him back into darkness.

* * *

He wakes up to the feeling of fingers running gently through his hair, brushing it off his temple with a sort of mindless rhythm that sends him to a daze of quiet contentment. The light is on, though it's turn down low, and he can hear the turning of pages as Darcy reads. She's leaning back against the headboard, her knees brought up to form a cradle for the book.

"What time is it?" he asks, sleepily.

"Oh!" Darcy says, her fingers stopping suddenly and hovering awkwardly just over his head. "I didn't mean to wake you."

He just rolls over and drapes an arm over her stomach, curling his body around hers and pressing his face into the soft skin of her abdomen. Her T-Shirt smells like the awful laundry detergent she'd bought once because it was cheap, that had left an odd powdery residue on everything they owned until he put his foot down and insisted on throwing it out.

"I might be awhile," she says ruefully. "I can go downstairs if you like."

He just moves his calves so that they're resting on the tops of her feet and presses a kiss to that soft spot where the underside of her breast meets her ribs. He can feel that she's not wearing a bra, and he absentmindedly takes the fabric of the shirt between his teeth and tugs at it.

She makes an odd sound of muffled amusement and turns a page, resting her other hand atop his head and taking up that same pattern, brushing his hair back over and over.

"Why are you up in the middle of the night reading?" he asks.

She glances absentmindedly down at him, giving him a distracted smile. "Haven't finished," she says.

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, yes, of course. Obviously."

She's already back into the book. He can see her eyes flying across the page, her fingers twitching in anticipation of turning the next one. She looks tired, and rapturous.

He's not quite asleep, but neither quite awake. He can hear the sound of paper against the sheets as she turns the pages, feel her breathing and hear it echoing in her chest. She's warm and soft, and he feels oddly like they are alone in the world in this moment, just the two of them, at stupid o'clock in the morning, the only witnesses to something extraordinary in its ordinariness.

The pages have stopped turning.

"Have you ever done this before?" Darcy asks, out of the blue.

"Shared a bed with a book-loving madwoman?" he asks.

She tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear, tracing the curve of its shell with her fingers in a way that makes him unconsciously echo the movement with his own fingers against her hip. "Just cuddled like this," she clarifies. "We've never talked about your past relationships."

He tenses, curling up tighter even as he prepares to pull away. "There's not much to say," he says.

"Oh, come _on_," Darcy says with a grin. "You're over a millennia old. I refuse to believe you don't have some serious horror stories somewhere in there."

"Why are you asking?" He knows he sounds petulant and defensive, but he can't help himself. He's capricious, and Darcy seems to only exacerbate that in him. It's a balancing act, their lives together.

"You don't have to answer," Darcy says. But her hand is still against his head, and he can tell, though she's looking at her book, she's no longer reading.

"There have been others," he says. He fights the urge to simply roll over and away from her, and instead lies unnaturally still, cradled against her.

"Oh," she says, after a moment. "You don't have to," she adds after another moment, "but if you ever wanted to talk about them – I'd like that."

"Why?"

She shrugs. "I'm curious, I suppose."

"And am I to ask the same of you?" he says, sneering.

She turns to look straight down at him, closing her book and keeping her place with a single finger. "If you want," she says. "It wasn't a challenge. We don't have to talk about this."

"Then why did you ask?"

She gives him an exasperated look. "Because I love you, and I'm curious about your life."

This time – unlike the last, when he lived this moment, he says what he is thinking – "none of them were like you."

She gives him an soft, pleased smile, and he can see in her eyes that she's flattered. Her fingers start up in his hair again, and she opens up her book, balancing it carefully on her knees.

"I think it's fair to say that I've never dated anyone like you either," she says, grinning. She brushes her fingers across his lips in a motion that feels oddly intimate, and very much like a kiss.

He is calm again.

This time, when the moment starts to slip through his fingers, he tries to grab hold. The pages of the book flip like a shuffling deck of cards as the roof above their head breaks apart. It sounds like a hurricane, a great cracking and whooshing that is tugging this world away from him, and he holds tight to it. To the smell of that awful laundry detergent, to the feeling of Darcy's fingers in his hair, to the calm acceptance he's found.

It is different this time. He wants to _stay_.

Then, Darcy does the impossible: she grabs hold of his hand, clinging back. He intertwines their fingers, and he feels the hard press of hers against his own. She's terrified, looking between him and the world that is crumbing about them, and back again. Then, to his utter astonishment, she says, "Loki? What's happening?"

It all falls apart, and he is left alone.

But for a moment, he had found her.

* * *

There is something more frantic about his search now. He tears through his own memories, looking for the one that will bring her back to him. But all he can see is her face, terrified, as their world had crumbled apart.

He tries very hard not to think about metaphors.

* * *

They're on the roof of Darcy's apartment building, sitting under the stars. Not, of course, that he can see many stars from beneath the city lights. It doesn't seem to bother Darcy, but it unsettles him deeply in a way he cannot quite describe.

He remembers everything about this night in vivid detail. The feel of the early-autumn chill night air on his skin, the texture of the fabric of the sweater she'd thrown over her summer dress. He remembers the way her hair curled loose over her shoulders, and her cheeks flushed from the bottle of wine they'd been sharing between them.

He wonders how he could possibly have been surprised by what happens next.

"Are you going to leave if we get the Bifröst working?" Darcy asks, lying on her back and staring determinedly up at the stars.

"I don't know," he answers truthfully.

"Would you go back to Asgard?"

"No," he says shortly, and she looks at him in surprise. "I would like to stay," he adds. "But I am not entirely certain that I am welcome."

She frowns, and then sticks out her chin in a way that is as endearing as it was meant to be stubborn. "You're welcome here so long as I have a say in the matter."

"You don't," Loki says bluntly. "At least not at SHIELD. And not to say that I don't appreciate the sentiment."

"I think you are severely underestimating me," she replies. "And my powers of persuasion."

"I have a reputation across the nine realms for being adept at _persuasion_," Loki says drily. "It has curried me very little favour with Director Fury."

Darcy snorts. "What would you do if you stayed here?"

He frowns, spinning his wineglass between his forefinger and thumb. "I am not certain."

"Then why stay?" She rolls onto her side, propping herself up with her arm.

"Because I am better when I am with you," he says.

When he says it, she kisses him. He remembers everything about this kiss too, and he relishes in it. But he cannot help changing it, because he is not the same person he was on the rooftop that night. He is not certain that he is better, but he cannot deny that Darcy has made him different.

He pulls her towards him, and she lets out a startled sound. He's missed this – uncomplicated affection. There is something intangible in early kisses that is lost through the passage of time. He is surprised to find his hands are shaking, but she is matching him, meeting his desperate need to hold her close and capture this feeling with slow, gentle movements that calm him.

They are complementary. He releases his grip on her, sliding his hands up her arms to caress her neck.

She has made him better.  
It shifts so abruptly he physically staggers. Suddenly he is standing in the kitchen, takeaway pizza in hand. Darcy walks past him and grabs two slices out of the box, and then turns away. She doesn't once look up from the book she's reading.

He is left standing in the kitchen, holding a pizza, alone. Half the lights in the apartment are off, and it feels more like a house that they've borrowed than one they have lived in for years. There is something hollow in the space between them now.

"Are you going to stand there all day?" Darcy asks from the couch.

This is what he's left with when the novelty wears off. He doesn't understand why his mind has brought him here. There is nothing in _this_Darcy he wants to recapture. She's reading in such a way as he can tell she's deliberately ignoring him now. It makes his skin crawl, as she turns the pages, the scraping of paper almost unnaturally loud.

He wants to pluck the book out of her hands and throw it at her. He wants to know how the girl on the rooftop could possibly have become _this_Darcy, who treats him like a stranger in his own home, but reminds him constantly that she knows all the right buttons to push, all the right places to strike.

Almost as if she were reading his thoughts, she looks up in disgust. "Why are you even still here?"

"You make me better," he says, bitterly.

She throws the book at the far end of the couch. "It's not up to me to make you _better_. Relationships take _two_ people, Loki. You're in a relationship of _one_."

He shuts his eyes, drops the pizza and flees.

* * *

He is running through the corridors of his own mind, stumbling in and out of memories that begin to fall apart as soon as he steps foot inside them. He sees Darcy in Central Park, in the summer sun, her face tilted up to the sky as she laughs. He tears the green dress he's just bought her off, pressing his lips to the skin where her collarbone meets her neck as he picks her up and spins her around. She's still laughing.

He sees himself holding her hair back as she has food poisoning from the restaurant they'd visited on their anniversary. He catches glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye, everywhere he turns. She's running too.

He's still not certain he wants to catch her.

* * *

She's on her side, facing away from him, curled up in the foetal position in the bed. He slips beneath the covers beside her, rolling so that they're lying back to back.

"We haven't had sex in over three months," Darcy says. He feels her roll over towards him and for a moment he seriously considers pretending he hasn't heard.

"So?"

Darcy is silent for a very long moment, and he can feel her staring at him. He uses all of his willpower to lie perfectly still.

She rolls away from him again, settling, before seeming to spring back towards him. "Is there someone else?" It sounds a bit like the words have been torn out of her unwittingly.

"Why would you ask that?" He's staring steadfastly at the wall on the far side of the room.

"Stop it!" she shrieks, sitting up. "At least _look_ at me when I'm talking to you."

The last time they'd had this conversation, he'd left. He almost leaves now. She's accusatory, and he's biting back all the things that he wants to say. That she has been pushing him away for much longer than a month.

He sits up, resting his back against the headboard next to her.

"Do you think we should split up?" She's quiet now, but her gaze is steadily fixed on his face.

"I can't leave you," he says, honestly.

She sighs, bringing her knees up to her chest and crossing her arms over them. "So, where does that leave us?"

It's a question he still doesn't have an answer to. He can feel the world slipping out from under his feet again, and he knows there isn't much time left. There are only so many memories he can burn through before he loses her forever.

"Stay with me, please," he says, taking her hand. "Stay."

She's looking at him strangely now. He hears the distant rumble of thunder. The world is tearing itself to shreds outside. "What have you done?" she asks, hollowly, and he feels nothing but guilt. It tears through his insides in time with the whirlwhind of destruction hovering just outside their door.

The ground beneath them cracks apart, leaving the bed balanced precariously over the great empty space beneath their feet.

"Stay," he says again, still holding her hand.

"There's nothing left to stay for. Even if we leave, it won't change anything." She's looking down through the crack in the floor, and he feels her grip on his hand release.

He acts on instinct, pulling her towards him and wrapping his hands around her, pinning her to his chest.

Then, he leaps.

* * *

They're still in their nightclothes, and he's pressing her to his chest. They're in aisle five at Safeway.

It's Thursday, and he's just placed salted butter into his shopping cart. On Thursday evening, he does not tear the universe apart bcause of it.

Instead, he bursts out laughing.


End file.
